Downpour of the Disquiet
by Inverse of Disaster
Summary: Sometimes when the rain stops you, and it seems like your entire day is ruined, you find comfort in the ones closest to you, and they may be even closer than you think...Palletshipping, oneshot


It was just a chilly evening in the middle of Fall. It was starting to grow colder-not that the weather normally bothered Gary, but because of the colder climate in Sinnoh, he was already having to wear warmer clothes.

But today, they just weren't fulfilling their role. While Gary was reasonably warm, and while he'd already taken the care to preserve the ultimate well-being of his Pokemon, who seemed to be quite comfortable in the gradually-worsening temperature, Gary's research coat by itself was not any sort of reliable source of warmth.

During the early afternoon, it hadn't really bothered him-but he would have to travel until much later in the night with only this jacket. While Gary had checked the weather beforehand, he was secretly cursing himself for paying so much attention to the weather forecast-after all, even only a day prior, they were rarely as accurate as they should have been, and this manifested itself in Gary's poor choice of clothes.

Since there was nothing he could do about the weather, though, Gary trudged through the muddy path, hoping sincerely that the clouds in the sky would not grow darker and start a downpour, making him both cold and wet-after all, Gary was constantly working between several research projects, and it seemed as though traveling while unprepared for the weather conditions would only weaken his health.

So Gary began to hurry through to the Pokemon Center he had to locate before nightfall-but it was in one of the most remote, indistinguishable towns-and the service there was likely to be mediocre as well, but at least they provided a warm, relatively safe bed to sleep in...

It seemed as though the meteorologists and the weather had both decided to side against Gary's wishes, however, as the wind was growing increasingly blustery, and although Gary didn't really realize it, as he was looking away from the sky in hope that the clouds would dissipate, but he even began to realize the gradually worsening weather conditions, and as he did so, he even almost broke out into a run, the cool air rushing harshly against his ears, which were already pink from the weather.

And then a few drops of moisture fell from the air, hitting Gary's skin and vanishing just as quickly, Gary ultimately realized that he was going to have to slow down, even if it meant that he was going to have to take some sort of shelter in the rain.

Gary lessened his pace, and it was almost an inverse effect-the rain, which had been only a slight drizzle, seemed to have developed into a heavy thunderstorm in the course of about ten minutes. Of course, Gary was still about an hour away from the Pokemon Center.

So he looked around for shelter-and as he did so, he realized just then that he was already soaking from head to toe, so he wouldn't have been able to keep himself from getting any more soaked anyways.

There was then a brilliant flash from behind Gary, immediately followed by a nearly-deafening crack. Gary flinched for a second upon hearing the sound, as he realized that the clap of lightning couldn't have been too far behind him, and that it may have been quite likely that he could have possibly been the next target of the indiscriminate stormy sky.

And then Gary heard a strange, cracking noise-sounding much as though a charred tree had enough with its life, and that it was about ready to fall over, perhaps due to some greater force-and then he saw a long shadow cast over him as said tree had begun to fall over, conveniently right in the direction that Gary had been walking.

Gary then broke out into a run-he lacked enough time to deal with injuries from a fallen tree in the middle of the forest. Of course, the ground was merely a mess of mud and puddles by this point, and the traction was poor at best.

As Gary had finally made sure that he was clearly out of the way of the tree, except for one lone outlying branch that scratched at the bottom of his drenched left pant leg, leaving a relatively noticeable tear in the fabric, Gary toppled over in the mud.

Gary pulled himself out of the rut of mud and stood back up, only to realize that he was now drenched and covered in mud. Furthermore, it had gotten even colder outside, which in addition to Gary's wet, dirty clothes made it feel like it was a calm winter night rather than a blustery night in the middle of fall. Not to mention, this had been his favorite pair of pants, and they were essentially ruined...This day was not one of Gary's best, needless to say.

And then he heard plodding footsteps, as though someone was running towards him. No, it was certainly a person-it can't have been a Pokemon, because Gary distinctly had heard shoes that were plodding along the mud, probably getting some combination of mud and rain both on and in their shoes.

He just hoped that it wasn't someone who would only make things worse for him. But really, was there to be a savior in this muddy hell of an indistinguishable forest? Gary had to curse Sinnoh for having so many of these silly, indistinguishable forests.

Not that Johto or Kanto were any better when it came to random mildly-forested areas in the middle of nowhere...

But at least the thunder and lightning in the storm, while still in the distance, were moving futher away from Gary rather than closer to him, even though that didn't seem to have made any difference at all.

Suddenly, Gary realized that he'd just heard a voice. No, to be fair, he'd heard this voice much earlier-though it was so faint due to the distance and the pouring rain that he hadn't registered it in his head. It was either that, or the rain was making him delirious to the point where he was hearing voices in the middle of the rain, but Gary decided that it was probably for the best to turn around and see who was behind him.

And as he whirled around, he heard the voice clearly for the first time.

"Hey! Hey, Gary! What're you doing in the rain?"

Catching up with him was a baffled-looking, but ultimately, slightly concerned-looking Ash, with his ever-present Pikachu on his shoulder, as always...and also, bizarrely, an umbrella.

Gary hesitated, then smiled. Even though Ash wasn't always the brightest, for once he was the one who was able to do the intelligent thing-not that an umbrella really mattered much when you were running, as when his eyes scanned up and down Ash, he noticed that most of his clothes were drenched, and that there had been a large quantity of mud that had caked onto Ash's shoes. But even so, Ash was smiling.

So then Gary replied, "If the weather report hadn't been wrong, then I probably would've been at the Pokemon Center by now without any problems...but then the storm started. I should really just start checking the radar..."

Ash tilted his head, and then said, completely straightforwardly and without any intent of sarcasm or malice, "But...why didn't you have an umbrella? Like, just in case?"

Gary sighed-Ash had struck a nerve. Gary's entire backpack, containing his laptop and his research documents, had been stolen roughly a few days prior to this rainy day. Of course, Gary's umbrella was in there, rather than on his person. However, the thief hadn't been anyone crafty-and they hadn't even gotten a hold of any of his credit cards. In fact, they were such a bumbling thief that they'd somehow dropped off his backpack in the next town-and Gary'd been notified of that, and it was being left in the Pokemon Center that way he could pick it up, but with this rain, it looked like it was going to be an impossibly long walk and only make him sick.

So he was grateful for Ash-and happy it was Ash of all people. But he didn't really feel like explaining his worries about his stolen backpack to him, such as worries about possible files that were supposed to be completely secret being duplicated and sent into the hands of unsavory people so Gary sighed and said "I lost it. And besides, there was lightning out there just now, and it took out a perfectly healthy tree. Did it ever even occur to you that an umbrella is a lightning rod? After all, shouldn't you know all about that by now? Pikachu _was_ your first pokemon, after all."

Ash scowled, and muttered something, but he said it too quietly and Gary wasn't able to hear it, but it must have just been some sort of response that Ash couldn't really vocalize because he didn't really have a good response. And while Gary put on a smirk, on the inside, he swooned just a bit-after all, Ash always was quite cute whenever he was frustrated-and Gary missed that frustrated face. It wasn't as though Gary liked to antagonize people, despite the fact that he had purposely tried his best to do so back when he was still a Pokemon Trainer. But there was just something about that frustrated, slightly-angry face on Ash of all people that he just couldn't help but provoke once in a while-just because it was too damn cute.

The sky was entirely dark by now, but it wasn't because of the weather, it was merely because it was getting later, and it was only getting colder. Gary shivered, hoping that Ash wouldn't really notice. There were so many fronts that Gary put up around Ash, some were just because he happened to like Ash, and others were leftovers from their days as fervent rivals...

It was probably the fault of the rivalry that Gary liked Ash so much. Certainly, though-Gary wasn't straight-and he'd always realized this-and he'd always accepted it in himself as well, so he wasn't really having any lingering feelings of doubt or guilt or anything positive or negative involving Ash's gender. As a matter of fact, it hadn't even really occurred to him that Ash's gender really made a difference. But somehow, Ash went from irritating, to a formidable rival, to being a little bit cute-and somehow, Gary had found that, if it wasn't love, that he liked Ash very, very, much-much more than he'd ever really liked anyone. And sometimes, Gary cursed himself for it-he didn't want to fall in love with someone so hopeless, and he knew that he'd never be able to vocalize these feelings. But Ash didn't really understand things about love, so Gary would have to put those feelings of his in a small little corner of his heart for a little while more.

Gary then inquired, "So, why are you out in the rain anyways? And how did you know I was here?"

Ash then said, "Well, we-uh, Brock and Dawn and me, we were all going to the next town, and we were originally gonna stay in the Pokemon Center, but then it started raining really badly, so we had to take shelter...and we found this old deserted house-I kinda hope no one lives there, but I went through every room, and it was deserted, so I guess it's okay. Anyways, I saw you running through when the tree fell, and Brock said it was at least another two hours until you'd even get to town, since we just kinda assumed that was where you were going..."

Then Ash's face went slightly pink-though it was doubtful that Ash realized that his face was going slightly pink, or really why it was, as he probably would have just assumed that his face was growing red from the cold-which Gary had grown essentially numb to at this point.

And then he continued, "Well, it's a really old deserted house..but do you want to stay with us for tonight?"

It was an invitation that Gary couldn't refuse-even though he had variable feelings about staying in a house alone with Ash-but then again, Brock and Dawn were there too, so there probably wasn't too much to be worried about.

Gary smiled, and said, "Alright, let's go. So where's this...house, that you guys are rudely walking into for a night?"

Ash then turned around and walked. While he did so, Pikachu looked back at Gary, and beckoned him forward.

So the two walked under the umbrella in silence for a bit. As they walked, Gary tried-at first-to try and keep some sort of significant distance between himself and Ash while under the umbrella, but then he was only pelted further by the rain. However, as he moved closer to Ash, it seemed as though Ash was intent upon doing the exact same thing, and then both of their shoulders collided with each other, and their hands slowly seemed to brush together, as Ash was holding the umbrella with his right hand.

While Gary's initial reaction was to move his hand away, it was too late-Ash had already taken Gary's hand in his own. However, it wasn't really because of any need to hold hands or anything, it was because Ash was quite fascinated.

"Did you know that your hand is about as cold as an Ice Pokemon's?" And with that, Gary was slightly irritated-it wasn't even a funny joke, and of course Gary would realize that his own hand was freezing. But if it was an excuse to hold hands with Ash without a real reason, he was totally fine with it-as Gary realized this, his frustration dissipated.

Gary then smiled, and allowed his fingers to interlink with Ash's. And then the two walked on together for a few more minutes, the silence slightly awkward, as both of their cheeks were slightly reddened, though both Gary and Ash were trying their hardest not to make eye contact with each other-though, Gary noted, the previously-indistinguishable forest now had a slightly...twisted feel to it, and the rain was even starting to feel a bit strange-but perhaps it was just Gary overthinking, or trying his hardest not to think about the implications of whether this would make him feel awkward later around Ash, or anything...

But Gary couldn't help but feel happy. Even if he was covered in dirt and freezing cold in a deserted forest to go stay in a house where someone was potentially living anyways, he was walking hand-in-hand with Ash...and he couldn't remember the last time he'd done that. Sometime when they were just children, without a doubt...

And then, a rustic old house came into view. It was the kind of house that wouldn't have been too out of place roughly a century ago-the house had painted wood siding, windows with a gold frame, and even a railing on the older brick-red roof on the house. Furthermore, the whole house had been overgrown with ivy, which made the house feel slightly creepy already from the outside.

But Ash didn't seem to pay any attention to it. "Alright, we're here!" And with a jolt, Ash disentangled his hand from Gary's and then turned the door handle and thrust the door open.

The house was just about as odd as it was on the outside. While it seemed a bit rustic, the wooden floors were worn too far-and there were strange paintings on the wall of various historical figures that Gary recognized, but few of whom he could even recall the names of. Furthermore, there were many different vases-some of which took the shape of various Pokemon, and some of which were just typical vases.

It was odd, but the electricity in the house seemed to be relatively intact-although there was yet another strange sight as Gary looked up to the ceiling. Despite the fact that this was just an average-seeming house, there was a very old, grandiose chandelier hanging from the ceiling, which dimly lit the front room.

And then the two of them walked into the next room-which Gary realized was the kitchen. And, thankfully, it was a familiar sight-Brock was sitting over the gas stove, which seemed to be working, for whatever reason-and stirring some of the remaining stew, which had been simmering for a while now-into two similar-looking bowls. Dawn, on the other hand, was sitting at the kitchen table, and gradually finishing the remnants of her stew.

But it didn't even take her another second-Dawn had immediately, upon noticing that Gary had walked into the room, had the nerve to immediately ask, "Gaaaary! Have you written any more poems? Come on, let's hear, let's hear!"

Even though he had absolutely no other problem with Dawn, this always irritated Gary to no end. Just _where_ on earth had that girl gotten the idea that he was some magnificent poet? He'd been able to humor her for a while, but he wasn't a particularly good poet, nor did he have any interest in poetry in the first place-that was one thing he definitely hadn't inherited from his grandpa. Even so, and despite the fact that he found her obsession with asking him for poems a bit annoying, he did feel a bit too badly about it to really tell her that he honestly had no interest in poetry.

So Gary smiled and said, "Haha, I'm sorry, but I really don't have any poems for now."

At this point, Gary realized that he was dressed in rather terrible clothes-they were covered in dirt and rain. While someone like Ash wouldn't have cared either way, Gary did place a certain amount of value on his appearance, and felt that his presence in this manner was a bit...off-putting.

As though Brock sensed Gary's thoughts about his appearance, Brock then turned to Gary and said, "You can't be comfortable, but I don't really have a spare change of clothes that would fit you...Ash, could you give him a pair of your pajamas?"

Ash then blanched and said, "But, my pajamas are just shorts and a shirt anyways, it's not like they're anything special..."

But regardless of this, Ash disappeared into some unknown area of the house, which was yet another thing that Gary thought was rather odd-they'd certainly spread themselves out over the strange house in a manner of what couldn't have been more than three hours. While he doubted that they'd have any problems cleaning up, Gary did find himself wondering about the original owner of the house-there'd probably be no way for him to have noticed that there had been people who had inhabited the house in their time of absence. After all, despite the fact that the house looked abandoned, there was working electricity and gas, so there had to at least be someone paying the bills for it, didn't there?

And then, a few minutes later, Gary found that he had changed into Ash's 'pajamas'. While they weren't exactly warm clothes, at least they were relatively clean and dry. However, he couldn't help but notice that these clothes smelled quite vaguely of Ash himself-and Gary realized that these were the clothes that Ash slept in quite frequently. He certainly couldn't say that the clothes smelled bad, and he was quite thankful on the whole.

At this point, Gary wasn't quite blushing, but he did find that, as he was heading back to the kitchen to eat some stew, that his thoughts were repeatedly returning to the thought of Ash sleeping gently in bed, with his shirt pushed slightly above his midriff, barely-exposing his skin, as he had been slowly kicking away the blanket...and once that thought had entered his mind, it didn't really want to leave.

So then the four of them had a relatively uneventful dinner-Gary mostly stopped paying attention to everyone else and absorbed himself in the food, which was unusually delicious-he had to admit that Brock was a very good cook.

Gary then finished his stew-only to look at Ash and realize that Ash was already on his third bowl of stew. He was always such a big eater, it was a wonder that Ash didn't really weigh at least 20 more pounds.

And then the four of them had found that they were all inside the living room, having nothing to do for the rest of the night before they were to go to bed. However, despite the fact that night had fallen, not even one of the four of them seemed to want to sleep very much.

But there wasn't really much conversation-either. Gary had taken the extra time to groom his Pokemon, as had Ash. Dawn had gone downstairs to practice her latest contest strategies, and Brock was currently trying to make food for the group's Pokemon-he always alternated the recipe, so that their Pokemon wouldn't grow bored of the food. After that, the four of them had taken to sitting while eating various candies, some of which were pumpkin-shaped, and others that also seemed to fit with the general season, that Dawn had just so happened to have with her. Even Pikachu seemed to be habitually helping himself to some candy corn...

So when she came back upstairs, Dawn was also ultimately the one who broke the silence with...an interesting proposition.

"Hey! This is like, an old house and stuff, so why don't we tell some scary stories? It'll be nice and creepy and stuff, but there still won't be any need to worry, right?" Before anyone could have said anything to the contrary, Dawn dimmed the lights to the point where everything in the room was only slightly visible, and then closed the curtains on the

Gary smiled-at least this wasn't poetry, and he was rather good at telling some scary stories.

But ultimately, it was Ash who started talking first-almost as though he wanted to be the one responsible for telling the story, that way he wouldn't be scared of anything that anyone had to say...

"Well, this one time, there was this guy who rode a really huge Dragonite, and then his Dragonite stopped obeying him, and then it became kinda like Charizard, only it was the opposite and it obeyed him less and less, and..."

And with that, Ash was cut off by Brock-it didn't seem as though anyone really was scared of that particularly large Dragonite, nor did they really care about what happened to its poorly-described owner. And with that, Brock turned to Gary and said, "Well, Gary, since we don't really get to see you that often, why don't you tell this story?"

Gary smirked. Normally, a story like this would be mediocre at best, but with their settings...he realized quickly that it would work perfectly.

And with a smirk, he said, "Tell me, all of you, before I begin...Why do you think that this house has running water, electricity, and gas, even though it's pretty obvious no one lives here?"

Ash was the first to interject, without really thinking about what Gary had just said, and said, "But it's a house, so someone has to be living here, right? Or they were in the past, so it's not like the electricity and water and stuff goes away. Maybe someone just decided to move away?"

...No one really knew what to say to the fact that Ash didn't seem to understand that electricity, running water, and gas services all required some sort of payment.

And then Dawn replied, "Hmm...well, maybe it's the house of an artist or something? You should've seen the basement, there were so many paintings and vases and things...there was this one really cute one that was shaped like a Piplup, you should've seen it! It was so cute!"

Brock then noted further upon what Dawn had said, "Well...certainly, whoever lived here seems to have some sort of an interest in art, but maybe they weren't so much responsible for painting as they were for collecting? The house is unusually nice, it might just be the case that the person who lives here's just been living in a summer home or somewhere else for convenience?"

Gary then smirked, and continued with his story.

"Well, those are some good guesses...but not quite. You see, this house belonged to an elderly woman, who, earlier on in her life, was a Pokemon Ranger. But then, one day, she sustained a serious injury, in these very woods."

"It happened about twelve years ago. However, the Ranger Association never publicized it-they'd never gotten her permission to do so, because she didn't leave this house after this happened. Also, they were a brand-new organization at that point in time-if they would have publicized this, they might have gone under scrutiny and they would've been shut down by the government."

No one really seemed to argue back, and all sets of eyes, including that of Pikachu and Piplup, were on Gary. He suddenly felt the pressure to deliver a particularly suspenseful story.,.

"You see...twelve years ago, in these very woods, there was a thunderstorm not unlike this one. However, unlike all of us, this former Ranger-her name was Irene-didn't have a house to stay in to get away from the storm. While she could keep relatively warm, not only was her aging body failing in the storm, but she had also, for the first time, taken her son with her. I don't remember the son's name-but that's not the point. Anyways, he'd always wanted to adventure alongside his mother, but he never really had the stamina for it, and he was fairing pretty badly as a result of the rain. Anyways, she'd gone to try and find some sort of way in which she could get to the Pokemon Center-so both her and her son climbed a tree to see if they could spot any shelter."

"Anyways, they saw it. So they mapped out the route to the center, and they were going to go there to warm up, and dry off, and recuperate, and everything was going to be alright. But then, as they climbed down the tree, they weren't so lucky."

For once in this day, the weather seemed to be working well alongside Gary-an unusually loud thunderclap echoed from not-too-far away, though it wasn't nearly as deafening as what Gary had heard earlier that night. Gary smirked once again-the thunderclap had made everyone twitch, and then they listened even more fervently to his story.

"Did you hear that? Well, it hit the ground-right here-twelve years ago on a night that was exactly like this. Now, Irene was all right, even though she'd just fallen out of a tree, but her son, on the other hand...Well, let's just say."

"On a night twelve years ago, not unlike tonight-the charred remains of a frail boy who couldn't have even been Brock's age are right below this house."

And once again, a thunderclap echoed, but by that point, they weren't really adding to the dramatic effect of what Gary was saying-everyone seemed to be somewhat shocked to various degrees; while Brock only looked mildly disturbed at the story, there were nearly tears in Ash's eyes.

"And upon seeing this blackened, charred mess of human organs that was her beloved son; her frail son who she had raised so lovingly-the woman went insane and built a house in this very area. After all, her son had always had an affinity with the outdoors, so as a final memento to him, she built a house right in the outdoors. But, being insane, she never left it-she always had delivery men worked up in a frenzy. Until, merely two weeks prior...she disappeared. Perhaps she realized that in order to truly reunite with her son, she would have to actually go outdoors again, or perhaps she'd run out of money and wanted to have something to show. But, we'll never know."

And Gary was about to continue, but he was interjected.

"Your poetry is so great, Gary! I can't believe you even put it in this scary story!"

The environment changed in the blink of an eye. While everyone looked a bit stressed out at the questionable origin of this house, all of them immediately broke out into raucous laughter.

For several minutes.

Just after the laughter had dissipated, Brock took a quick glance at his watch, and noticed that it was already relatively late-and with that, suggested that all of them should just go to sleep.

So...

They heeded that suggestion. But the sleeping arrangements were a bit strange...it seemed as though Gary was to sleep with Ash in one room, with Brock and Dawn each having their own. It was at times like this that Gary wondered if his feelings that he buried deep inside of him were obvious to those two

Well, Gary had a feeling that Pikachu knew about it, but Pokemon tended to be too wise for their own good, even if their trainers didn't exactly follow that example.

"So...were you scared, Ashy-boy?" Gary couldn't help but tease Ash after having seen that ridiculous facial expression on Ash's face earlier, but...once again, Ash was just going to be unusually defensive.

"I-It's not like your story even happened, anyways-this house is way more than 12 years old!" interjected Ash.

Gary then replied, "But...you never denied you were scared, did you, Ashy-boy?"

Ash blushed slightly. "Shut up."

And with this, Gary smiled and let the topic drop. While he always had a hard time sleeping-he looked directly to the left of him and noted the already-asleep messy-haired boy lying right beside him.

So Gary leaned next to Ash and gently kissed his cheek, then backed away and turned around, to make a valiant attempt at sleep.

"Sweet dreams, Ashy-boy."

---

Authors' Note: This is crossposted from Bulbagarden for the Halloween Contest...I hope you guys enjoy it! I really need to get back into fanfic-writing, my plot-bunnies and silly headcanon have been running dry lately...And I can't think of much else to say, so I hope that everyone who reads this has a very Happy Halloween with lots of delicious candy and parties and stuff.


End file.
